Guild Wars 2

Bruno.3812:

Maybe it’s because in a world where people are active and running around and fighting and not eating modern refined foods and sugar, very few people are fat.

This just in, folks: capitalism invented fat people.

Smh

LucosTheDutch.4819:

Adding new physique options would mean they’d have to reskin all the existing armor skins to fit the new physique types, which would be a lot of work, which means Anet probably won’t do it.

If Anet does find the time for such an ordeal, I’d rather they work on an entirely new playable race, which would require a similar amount of work.

There already are plenty of fat body phisque options for humans and norn. For muscular women, again, look at norn. And for thin physiques, look no further than humans and sylvari especially.

What you’re asking for is already in the game. Maybe not for the race you like to play, but it’s there. In a way I’m happy that each race has their own set of physiques. It helps distinguish the races from each other. Norn already are basically just giant humans and that’s it. The fact that their women on average are more muscular than human females and their men fatter than human males makes them a little more distinguished from humans and a little bit more unique.

Do they not just have to set the rigging for the armours? I mean I’m just guessing here but I think it would make more sense to have them coded in a way so that you just need to adjust some variable points in a frame for all sets to fit the same bodytype…

Fat bodytypes? Where? I can count one single male charr type that can be considered sort of chubby, a unisex asura bodytype that is vaguely stocky, and perhaps a few male norn types with some sort of gut. Those do not constitute fat bodytypes. Fat means visibly larger and wider frame, an actual belly, perhaps even (gasp!) fat rolls, thicker (not because muscular) limbs, etc.

As for muscular, a slightly toned physique (which is mostly just texture btw) is the most you can get on norn women for example. Look at the males. They are HUNKS. That kind of muscular type is clearly lacking, and is what a lot of people would love to have. Think Zarya from Overwatch.

So, no, what they are asking for is not in the game, not to any significant extent. The diversity of the bodytype selection for humans of both gender options is laughable. Sylvari don’t fare much better. The norn gender disparity is ridiculous. Asura are sorta cartoonish rubber-limbed gremlins anyway, but they could also use a bit more diversity. The only race whose bodytype selection I’m pretty satisfied with is charr (though they could also use a proper fat option too).

Same thing with One Good Drink Deserves Another for me. For the first time, it loaded, but there was a missing chunk of ground, then it crashed, now it crashes immediately at the end of loading.

As a general rule, PvP unfortunately attracts the worst kind of players in the community alongside decent players. I would also like it if at least this quasi-barrier of Ranked and Unranked was there at all times, as the former usually tend to migrate to Ranked. Players just trying to play for fun or reward points don’t need their game time ruined by others who seem unable to let go of their (over)competitiveness even in Unranked.

I also enjoy PvP itself, but this prospect of meeting awful people is what deters me most of the time from playing it. This situation doesn’t need to be worse off-season than it already is.

Also getting the bug where I’m not getting rewards (in arrears) for non-core map completion on a character that has 100% core completion. Got rewards for a previously completed/newly completed Dry Top or Silverwastes on multiple other characters, but not on that one (she has had both completed before HoT release). Have not managed to complete any HoT maps yet, but I’m assuming it’d be the same with those as well.

In the final instance,
1) Also encountered the bug where there’s no ground under the rift once.
2) As a result of dying after the glider phase, Mordremoth kept the projectile and ring attack permanently, using them constantly throughout the entire fight from then on after every reset and making it completely impossible to beat.
3) SpoilerAre you aware that the Blighted Pale Tree is entirely impossible to solo on an elementalist? I mean I don't consider myself a bad player and tried literally every skill combination and strategy I could muster without leaving the instance, but had absolutely no chance of beating it. There is simply no way to keep up stability, healing, dps, and killing the blighted firstborn all at once while taking colossal amounts of damage in the final phase. If an instance is meant to be soloable, then I believe it should be soloable for all classes. I've been maining ele with this current build for about a year and a half now, playing it almost every day, so I don't think it's my skill level that's at fault here. (also full ascended gear bar 1 armour piece)

Alright, the bug in which the custom battle playlist was only randomized once upon login and would start with the same goshdarn song every time a battle happened, has now spread to the boss playlist (which is not supposed to randomize in the first place!). Additionally, the main menu playlist has stopped working.

Guys, what are you doing to the playlists. Stahp.

Bumping, still not solved, still highly frustrating. Help??

Any luck? I also submitted a bug report on the issue.

Increasing the music interval didn’t help for me. I’m still getting the same song over and over again. The custom battle playlist is a very important part of my GW2 experience and has been so for years, so please fix this, this is very annoying.

BobbyStein.2315:

I just wanted to provide an update since it’s been a while.

• We are currently working to restore the Greatest Fear storyline to the live game. I can’t provide a release date at this point.
• In addition to restoring the Personal Story steps to their original order we’re making some minor improvements where possible (e.g. recording new VO or updating certain conversations, etc.).

We’ll provide additional details closer to release. Thanks much for your patience.

[x]

triggerhappy.3871:

Someone changed this does not look like original storyteller who launched this game.

Because they are probably not. A lot of people from the old team are no longer with Anet. That is why, if this is indeed the case, this jumbling up of the story is especially messed up. It’s an insult to the original team’s work, in addition to making no sense whatsoever, neither story-wise nor as a decision. And still after all this time, all we’ve gotten as response to our concerns are unfulfilled promises of looking into the issue.

Mental Paradox.3845:

Bump. I’m not giving up on this topic before I’m banned.

I hope the big announcement at PAX East is not about an expansion, but about fixing everything they broke last time instead.

Like the entire story!

How about both.

Okay wut I left it there for 5 minutes and suddenly connected.

Same. My friend who lives like half a city away but has the same ISP is having no problems.

The launcher does not even try to connect. Like no, neither my connection nor my computer are that fast. It just straight up retries into infinity and the window freezes.

Is this a bug or did you guys seriously put this much (i.e. zero) effort into the charr version of this skin?

As I see it, armour skin conformity for charr has always been low priority (ill-fitting helmets, clipping tails, etc), but this is ridiculously, awfully bad. Please fix this. Look how unhappy my lady charr is.

Many good ideas here, but if I had to pick one to get behind, it would be first person. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, just for taking screenshots and for orientation in tight places (jumping puzzles!!!!). Take a look at the 1st person camera in LotRO, for example, simple and efficient. It even has FoV adjustment, though I could forgo that if it’s too much work.

Oh and just one more thing: I’d rather have models go completely invisible like in GW1 when the camera clips with them. Reason: have you tried standing close to a wall on an asura char? Neverending nightmares

Gaile Gray.6029:

I believe I understand you’d like to know if the Personal Story can be “reset” to a previous state. I have sent an email to ask about that and will let you know when I get some info for you.

I don’t mean to troll but that email is taking hella long to arrive innit >_>

Thing is, the LS missions are built in a way – mechanics and story-wise as well – that focus on you and you only. There is supposed to be one Boss, you, the owner of the instance. If you bring someone along to your instance, they will invariably become a meaningless sidekick, unable to interact with even non-essential objects such as the books in Hidden Arcana. You can’t realistically play LS missions as a group. LS is meant to be solo.
The real problem here revolves very much around class and mob AI. Mobs do completely ignore the immortal npc-s and gang up on the player, regardless of whether their class is able to play the role of tank. This, for example in a mission like Tracking the Aspect Masters, results in guaranteed deaths if you’re an ele or similar class not meant to tank 234 mobs at once. Sticking to this example, you 1) can’t pull slowly here, almost every mob aggroes immediately in the first fight 2) the veteran thrasher alone will kill you as soon as you run out of healing and evasion skills. The average ele simply cannot outheal/outlast the constant barrage of homing vines this thing spews at them relentlessly (mind you my ele is not even full dps, she is dps/balanced for more survivability, but it’s to no avail here). The thrasher will only turn on Canach and Rox if you simply choose to just stay away and let them bring it down themselves. Which I’m sure some people are okay with or even find funny, but if I can’t participate in fights because it’s better to let the npcs do it alone, then why am I there? Then I’m not needed and let the entire thing be just a string of cutscenes.

The immortality of story npcs is actually the #1 indicator that there’s a problem. Why do they have to be immortal? Back in the Personal Story, Trahearne and everyone else could die. They could be revived, sure, but if you let them die, the fights got harder to manage. Here I’m pretty darn sure they had to have been made immortal so that some insanely difficult mob (not boss!) fights wouldn’t reset constantly because of everyone dying. Tell you what, this is not necessary. It’s not necessary to have the same mob difficulty in an instance meant for solo as outside in the Silverwastes, which is a group-heavy map. Or, have insanely difficult mobs, but give them a brain. If the player’s a tank-capable class, everything should indeed aggro on them by default. It would be up to the player to keep mobs off the npcs, who would play a dps role. If you let them die, you won’t have enough dps to kill the mobs in time before they eventually overwhelm you. If you’re a support/dps class, most mobs would focus on more tank-capable npcs, and your job would be to dps while also keeping the npcs alive. Again if you let them die, the mobs will come for you and eat you up.

This system worked back in GW1, why doesn’t it work here?

(As yet another alternative, bring Mercenary Heroes to GW2 for mission instances. You have no idea how much I’d love to bring at least one of my other chars along to kick mordrem kitten with.)

Edit: to the OP: there’s indeed no such thing as a deliberate skill delay, sometimes skill buttons can be a bit unresponsive, but any delay you experience is almost certainly the product of server lag.

AirimirOfGondor.9081:

And finally there are those who care about storytelling and can’t get into their main character if their main character is Mr./Mrs. Perfect and never makes any mistakes. And we’re worried that removing the greatest fear storyline is sanitizing the story to become just that. It makes it a bad story from a narrative perspective. And we thought they cared about telling a good story. We all are starting to feel like we were wrong about that now.

This. And the most ridiculous thing is they kitten the PS in the face and simultaneously hype the everloving hell out of the current living story. How does this work? Is this an ‘out with the old, in with the new’ policy gone horribly, horribly wrong and way too far? That’s what I’m starting to think.

The fact that in my opinion the LS is actually good (no idc I seriously like it a lot shutup) makes it a lot worse for me. It’s like being able to draw a perfect pink rose but completely sucking at drawing a red one. Hooooow.

Can we perhaps expect something on this in the update today or will it continue to remain untouched in the hopes of being forgotten? Which it won’t by any self-respecting player who sees past the MMO in the acronym and notices the RPG as well?

At least do something about the duplicate Temple of the Forgotten God in the journal, I mean by the Alchemy, that is so embarassing.

I can’t log on those of my characters that I left in the Grove.

Edit: now it let me on. I think maybe this could be related to instances being full? My friend got this a few days ago when he was trying to join Sparkfly Fen for the 9 pm Teq, when there’s always a great number of people there in multiple instances.

Thanks for the update Gaile. It’s relieving to see you guys do listen to reason and player opinions.

My constructive criticism:

1. Put in the old UI alongside this with every functionality. Not having to keep guessing the amount of gold you need to put in for gems for instance is good, but only together with the option of custom amounts. Also removing the history graph is just a blatant, shameful attempt to keep customers in the dark. Imagine if people at the stock market could only ever see current rates.

2. Apologize to the playerbase for trying to screw them over and sugarcoating it with obvious nonsense about new players and convenience that no one kittening believes.

3. Stop insulting the playerbase’s intelligence with moves like the one mentioned in point 2. Veterans are no fools. New players are not mentally handicapped.

4. Read up on current business practices, what is trending and what is not acceptable anymore (hint: this).

5. Have some dignity and get rid of the utterly incompetent skrittheads sitting in the business/management department to whom nothing is sacred on their crusade for the almighty buck. I’ll have to add, they are trying to win battles in that crusade equipped with rubber swords and catapults that shoot flowers and supplies at the enemy. Meaning they have absolutely no idea what they should be doing to actually not alienate players and increase profit. Which is, read up on actual player suggestions, do stats on which aspects are most popular, and work on those. It’s really not rocket science.

Zaklex.6308:

Another thing to keep in mind is that if you are always getting your Gems from Gold, you as a player are not contributing a dime to A.net except with your initial purchase of the game. Only those that buy Gems with real money are providing income.

Thing is, I for instance, would pay real money from time to time for something I want right away and have no patience or time to farm gold for (see: the count outfit right now). But I don’t like being taken for an idiot, and if Anet forces things like this down my throat, that’s exactly what they are doing to me and I won’t even consider paying them just out of sheer principle, I don’t care if they bring in dragon mounts or what the heckever. It’s 2014, not 1914. The market is huge, and the way you treat customers is equally as important as the goods you provide. If you don’t see this, your customers will turn away and the competition will eat you. It’s that simple.

Relshdan.6854:

ArmoredVehicle.2849:

Never understood why people keep giving money to a company that doesn’t care. Even if they reverse the change, the damage has been done.

exactly. they showed their hand.....even with a a revert, there is no reason to believe they won’t do this type of shady dealing again.

silly Anet....you didn’t have top rig the conversion system.
if you wanted us to buy more gems....you just could have given us better cosmetic gem store items.

And they even did so, right alongside this heap of manure. I was really excited for the count outfit, I’m saving up gold for something else so I thought just this once I’d perhaps ease up on my policy of not buying gems with money because of the personal story’s massacre.* Right up to the point when I nevertheless went to check the rates just to see how much they’d gone up with the update. And then I flipped my kittening kitten.

There goes another payment from a customer. If you give with one hand but shoot a gun with the other, people will likely be uninterested in what you’re giving.

*Which is still unfixed and uncommented on.

It’s like

Please everyone, give us your money

Here we’re making it more tedious and incovenient just for you

Look you won’t even have to worry about giving us more than you intended to, we’ll take care of that

Will you give us your money now?

I’m trying not to be a sarcastic butt, I really am, but seriously, Anet’s (or NCSoft’s, idk where these changes originate from) business department does not seem very competent to me at this point.

Why destroy one of the greatest names in MMO history with moves like this.

Gz on another kittenty unannounced change.
At least if the minimum amount of gold to gems was 200 I could be okay with this.
But no, it’s 400.
Also removing the fluctuation graph and averages, like why.
Oh wait, I know, so people lazy to check on external sites won’t see the average and will buy for kittenty rates, making them perhaps spend more in the long run.
Good job on making such a blatant, forced grab for money.
Ty Anet.

(Inb4 this thread sinks into forum oblivion)

We are still waiting for answers. I need a character slot right now but just letting you guys know I’m refusing to buy gems currently because of this. Not because the PS is messed up, no. It’s because of the fact that we, those players who care about story in our favourite RPG, are still being kittened in the face in place of a comment, any kind of comment from the devs on this issue.

I do not think this is fair on any level.

Gill Halendt.2038:

I can confirm first hand that it’s not fixed.

And it’s not just for characters created after NPE: whoever hit Level 70+ after the latest Feature Pack unlocked Chapter 7 in its current form, hence the new version.

I got the new one on an NPE character that’s been sitting on Chapter 5 but is currently lv80. One of my guildies resumed playing a character created back in January and leveled it to lv75 so far. Went through Retribution yesterday and he got the “new” version as well, the “Greatest Fear” storyline still missing.

Why we can’t have any indication about this issue is really beyond me. Even just knowing that the messed up, shortened story is here to stay as it is would help, at least we could move on and be done with it.

I really, REALLY hope this doesn’t turn into another blatantly ignored issue like that of Traits unlocks, but judging by the current lack of information I’m not holding my hopes up…

Thing is, with an issue like trait unlocks, you can sweep it under the rug. There are ways to go around it, and it doesn’t actually break the game, it’s just annoying.

A broken, nonsensical MAIN STORYLINE however breaks the entire kittenin game in the sense of serving its function. It’s funny when the devs of a role-playing game forget how original, paper-and-pen RPG-s were all about building and telling a story – the fun of combat and game mechanics was just an added perk – and allow such an enormous issue to go practically ignored for a month by now. I know some people don’t care about the story that much and play mainly for the fun mechanics, but then again, I don’t care that much about realism and graphics in an FPS, for example, which is important for a majority of players of that genre. It still has to be there and has to work, otherwise your game is an unfinished, alpha-phase mess. An RPG might be playable without a comprehensible storyline, but then it’s not an RPG, it’s a non-conceptual tactical combat game in a fantasy setting, much like MOBAs.

I was getting my hopes up with Chris Whiteside’s hint in another topic about a possible update on the issue a while ago, but time is passing, and there’s still nothing substantial. If I had been a new player at the time of the update, I would have quit after about a week. Now I’m just very, very, very disappointed in Anet’s current performance. And the sad thing is, like you said, it would take only one teensy weensy godkitten post, saying “WE ARE WORKING ON IT ALREADY, THIS AND THIS WILL HAPPEN”, to satisfy me and calm me down regarding the issue.

We are still waiting for the devs to make an official statement on this. In the meantime, look at this thread.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Malkavian.4516:

Okay. I’ll wait it out. Here’s hoping you get it fixed really soon. I can’t have my 2nd Character play a broken story. :P

Hi Malkavian,

I or Leah will update as soon as we can and we intend to at the minimum to get things back in order.

chris

Finally, a hint on what is actually going to happen to the PS beyond “addressing issues”. Thank you, Chris.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

SlayerGT.6805:

By well-formulated I meant at least coherent and somewhat engaging. I did not say it was a masterpiece, I meant it was a story that I could make sense of and relate to, and that worked for most people. If it hadn’t, they wouldn’t be complaining this much, would they. What it currently has become is kittening chaos.

I’m not sure yet, because I haven’t got someone playing through the story yet. What I do know is . . .

It does need revision, but it needs to be more, not less. I think anyone with half a brain could realize that.

NEVER assume that. It needs to be tightened up, and removing a part might be needed. I would like to see more parts added in, but along the same lines . . . maybe that’s not the best answer. For that writer.

The problems I had with the personal story include “too many moving parts” and trimming them out or moving them to side-stories which can be done outside of the PS is probably better for the PS than leaving them in “because we need more”. What we don’t need is strictly “more”, in my observation, but “more focus”.

You do have a point, and I think it might not be a bad idea to introduce side storylines and move things into them, although I’m afraid that would require so much re-cutting and patching up of the main story it’s unlikely to happen (or happen in a non-catastrophic manner). What Anet still shouldn’t be doing is just dropping things and reordering the rest in a completely haphazard fashion so that it looks kinda sorta more concise if you don’t actually ever play a single mission of it and realize it is incoherent. There are also other ways to trim the story than just outright cutting out a whole block that is by the way also crucial to character development. Just off the top of my head, the Fort Concordia mission rivals some of the more lengthy GW1 missions in duration. I wouldn’t mind if that was cut shorter (not cut out, just shorter).

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

SlayerGT.6805:

(Not to mention if they wanted to make the core story better, they should start with Trahearne.)

No, I think what they have to do is do a better “handoff” from mentor to mentor. From the racial hero of Destiny’s Edge to the Tyrian Order Mentor, that has to be one of the weaker ones.

And then from that to not a mentor, but companion, Trahearne? That handoff was so bad it colored what many thought of the character.

That is also a very good point, especially the switch to Trahearne, but his lack of character development is just as bad, as he is supposed to be The Companion. I don’t want to go into too much detail as others have already written about it a thousand times before, and a thousand times better than me, but his potential to be a relatable and loveable character is barely exploited at all. As The Companion he should feel almost as equally important as the PC, but to me he is unfortunately not much more than a placeholder.

Calys Teneb.7015:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Thia.4891:

It saddens me greatly that story was removed, but it makes me happy to see that I’m not the only one passionate about this. Hopeful, ANet will see that the story MATTERS to us players, and then do the right thing and revert all the changes.

I’d rather they sit down with the chapters, two pots of coffee, and figure out how to smooth it out even if it means cutting things or having to go beg VAs to get back in the studio to shoot more content and adding things.

I don’t understand why people were so attached to the Fear storylines. They weren’t all that impressive. Only one of them had any real value to the story as a legitimate threat. The other two felt entirely tacked on and super rushed.

Apatia swims around and gets captured. Or she goes for the caravan, gets captured, and you do all the work to accomplish the mission without her anyways. She literally accomplished the fewest things in the story arc she appears in of anyone in the entire game. Faren is more useful and memorable than Apatia.

Tonn’s story just had no closure. It’s a buddy cop drama where you have to sit through a bunch of dad jokes, put together a special explosive to accomplish the same effect as a single trebuchet attack on Claw Island, and then he just vanishes. Dead, apparently. From the explosion? From the Krait? Did the undead get him? Who knows? He’s just dead now. How is that heartbreaking? It’s just confusing.

If they actually want to rework the fear storylines and make them relevant, then by all means, but I’m certainly not torn up about losing either of those two.

Sadly, I have to agree with you on your critique of the Fear missions. However, I think people are attached to them (that is, at least I am) because they show how ugly kitten can happen that you have no control over. That your character is not all-powerful, and you get to see how they face absolute failure, not only how they face victory. These missions might be crappily executed, but they have moral value, and the solution is not to sweep them under the rug. If the devs care enough about them being sub-par, they should work on improving them. If it’s too much work, leave them as they were. There have been complaints obviously, but I have never heard of anyone quitting GW2 solely because “the story is meh.”

(Not to mention if they wanted to make the core story better, they should start with Trahearne.)

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

SlayerGT.6805:

If it turns out this is true, I will be forced to consider the current management and those responsible for the story content the lowest of the lowest scum. There is no kittening excuse for this. None. None at all. I don’t care what kind of bullkitten forced corporate reason they come up with, it will be unacceptable. You don’t ruin an existing, well-formulated storyline – and the original team’s hard work – like this.

Oh. My. Kormir.

. . . you said that with a straight face, “well-formulated storyline”.

I know I defend a lot of things about the storyline (mostly how Trahearne doesn’t gloryhound as much as people want to insist he does) but I don’t defend it as well-formulated.

It wasn’t. The story needed about another hour to set properly and then get served to the consumers. Its pacing was bad, characters came and went with no clue what they were doing after you left them behind, and the only way to have it make sense is to consider all PS elements . . . at the same time . . . being concurrently happening through the slaying of Zhaitan.

It needed / needs some revision even now, but the problem with doing so is well-illustrated in how many people have flipped their tables over removing even one part of the story.

As I’ve already said before in another reply, you can’t do whatever you want to an MMO just because it is your game.

Sigh. Yes, you can. They are actually, not figuratively, but actually the only people who have the right to say what goes in or comes out when it comes to their game. We do not own any part of the game or the story. They can change anything they wish at any time, that is their right by holding the copyright to the IP.

In an MMO, if you kitten on your playerbase’s wishes and needs, they’ll rightfully kitten in your wallet instead of putting money in it. It’s not rocket science.

And that is your right as a consumer to not patronize them anymore. Just know it’s never really worked when people tried it. George Lucas, Michael Bay, Berman & Braga . . . didn’t stop them from making a mess of the three (or four) major IPs they were entrusted with.

By well-formulated I meant at least coherent and somewhat engaging. I did not say it was a masterpiece, I meant it was a story that I could make sense of and relate to, and that worked for most people. If it hadn’t, they wouldn’t be complaining this much, would they. What it currently has become is kittening chaos.

It does need revision, but it needs to be more, not less. I think anyone with half a brain could realize that.

Yes, they can do whatever they want, but if you read the dev comments on the level gating section of the update, they specifically state that they wanted to increase player retention with the changes, old and new alike (although focusing on the new). Well, this kittening kitten right here is doing the exact opposite. And then it turns out no, you can’t do whatever you want, because if you kitten it up enough, your players go away. Because MMO-s require a constant playerbase to survive, unlike movies. If a movie you expect to be great turns out to be total kitten, you’ve still paid at least once to watch it and you can’t do anything about it. I’m sorry, but your comparison is not entirely valid. Not patronizing might never have worked with movies, books or any such things, especially considering how much wider an audience these other media still have over games and their creators can afford to lose a few hundred thousand fans with the occasional crappy release. Guild Wars 2 however depends on consistent satisfaction of its players to keep them buying from the gemstore, and good reputation and word-of-mouth to attract new players, who in turn stay to buy from the gemstore. Since there are no expansions as of yet, it won’t keep making money if this doesn’t work.

Seraphina.6859:

anzenketh.3759:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

anzenketh.3759:

That is correct they are all vague. He did not say yes it is intentional not did he say it is a bug.

I am personally suspecting it is a bug as the game files for the quest are still in the game. If it was a intentional removal players would not be able to play the story.

Okham’s Razor

Them still being in the game files is outright (indirectly) explained:

They did not alter the story placement for those characters that were already in chapter 7 or chapter 8. To quote:

If you were on the storyline pre-patch, you’ll still be on it post-patch. (Thought it might not be visible until you reach L70, since it’s in Chapter 7.)

From this very thread.

In short: you will experience no loss of the greatest fear storyline if you have reached Forging the Pact. You will experience no reordering of Orr’s plot if you have reached Temple of the Forgotten God. If you had not reach them then you will experience the change. Ergo, the files must remain in the game. This was likely done to prevent confusion (lol) over those who are in the middle of said plots – or to prevent players from missing/repeating story steps if they’re in the middle of chapter 8.

Why are you so intent on proving to me that it is not a bug and is intentional? Again the statement from Jeff stated nothing in regards to removing anything story related from the game.

Unfortunately, I also think it is intentional and not just a bug. In the battle of Fort Trinity, you have a conversation with Trehaerne at the beginning and at the end where you mention you actual “greatest fear” storyline (you know the cinematic voice acted dialogue), but these lines are now not present in the conversation, they were also cut out.

If it turns out this is true, I will be forced to consider the current management and those responsible for the story content the lowest of the lowest scum. There is no kittening excuse for this. None. None at all. I don’t care what kind of bullkitten forced corporate reason they come up with, it will be unacceptable. You don’t ruin an existing, well-formulated storyline – and the original team’s hard work – like this. You just don’t! There is literally nothing Anet can say or do that would make me accept this kind of massacre of the game’s core story in its current form. The ongoing absolute lack of news or official comments (it seems even Chris must go on a freaking Wyld Hunt to find out what’s going on), despite players constantly demanding such, are just increasing my suspicion that this is indeed fully intentional. And I just don’t know where this game will be heading next if this isn’t revoked despite the unanimous, outspoken outrage of the playerbase over it.

As I’ve already said before in another reply, you can’t do whatever you want to an MMO just because it is your game. If you want to do that, make a single-player, non-dynamic game. In an MMO, if you kitten on your playerbase’s wishes and needs, they’ll rightfully kitten in your wallet instead of putting money in it. It’s not rocket science.

anzenketh.3759:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Malkavian.4516:

Hello Chris. I am not sure if you are the right person I could ask for this job as the customer service thread doesn’t seem to tell me much, but this has something to do with the Personal Story.

First off, here’s the link: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2g02mx/the_personal_story_doesnt_make_sense_since_the/

Now I can understand rearranging certain chapters. I think I can live with it given time. But what caught my attention however is related to the quest A Light in the Darkness where you disabled the Your Greatest Fear portion of the quest, which in turn would disable the other quests related to that part (for example, the removal of Tonn and Apatia’s quests). I don’t know if this is really the case or not as I have finished Apatia’s quest after this patch was downloaded. I want to know if this is really true or not. And if so, I’d appreciate your insight as to why this happened.

Hey Malkavian,

Mind if i get back to you on this?

Chris

If this is true it is likely a bug. I have heard of a player playing this instance after patch so it is still in the game files.

Thank you Anzenketh. Finally a response. Well, an acknowledgement of the issue at least, but it is enough to already make me 50% less kittened about this whole business, proof that the devs at least know the PS has gone crazy.

RedStar.4218:

Metrics must have told them that their players aren’t paying any attention to the PS. So why bother with continuity when they can just remove things and only a small minority of players will even care to complain about it ?

Okay, and in what way is it beneficial to have 4 missions less or to rearrange it if players “don’t care” anyway? Were they just waiting for a chance to screw it up because the new team hates the core story? Was a coherent story costing extra money?

No, it makes no sense. I’m starting to have a half-hunch we’re still not getting any info on this because they cannot come up with a plausible explanation for such a kittenty decision.

The messed up continuity is just ridiculous and cannot work in the long run. It’s not something to be unhappy about, it cannot remain that way. Who would want to play a game that doesn’t make sense? They might as well take out Orr in its entirety. Or the entire PS from the Orders onward. I guess I could be persuaded to live with the changed order if the missions themselves were tweaked to fit this new continuity, however, taking out the Greatest Fear missions would even so be unwarranted.

If they wanted people to get to LS quicker they could have done other things. Like, upscale people in Dry Top and LS missions, you know. Or something. It’s not a valid excuse.

I would actually be interested in seeing a cleansed version of Orr as well. I guess they could keep infected Orr in missions only? I kind of wondered why LA also became ruined in the PS missions taking place there, when the events of the LS have clearly taken place after Zhaitan’s defeat. Anyway, cleaning up Orr as a map still does not warrant or in any way relate to scrambling up the events leading to its cleansing, either.

But 1) it’s still in there, if you had started that story arc before the update, you can still play those missions 2) not only Apatia is gone! What about the other two branches? Unfortunately one can’t really come up with any sane reasons as to why one of the most important points of character development would be taken out. There are none, period. That is why we would really want to see Anet explain this.

Absolutely agree with you as well, Shardelyss. The saddest thing is, as I’ve already said in another post, with every minute this is not addressed by the dev team in some manner, any manner, the damage increases. Roleplayer-type players will just keep getting angrier and more confused, being left to guesswork on what the everloving hell this is supposed to be. Meanwhile, non-roleplayers are blowing their lids because of level gating and related issues. This is rapidly turning into the greatest fiasco I have yet experienced in gaming, in relation to what the update was supposed to achieve, that is, streamlining gameplay and increasing player retention. It is currently doing the exact opposite.

Roybe.5896:

The only reason I can even come up with on the removal of the Apatia story is some Chinese censorship issue that required the series to be completely removed from the code so it could not even be datamined. Whether it’s the idea of doing something that caused some one to be incarcerated and killed somehow being subversive to the Chinese government, or some social taboo that we do not understand. I have actually done this story step a few times because I thought it was actually one of the more compelling story ideas in the game. My two coppers on this. I hope it can come back…it made my characters who they are…

Edited for additional information:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Apatia

“The word “apatia” appears in Portuguese, Esperanto, Finnish, Italian, and Polish with the meaning of “apathy.”

There’s the possible source of the problem. By naming her apathy that gives the powers that be in the Chinese government a reason to strike the story from the game. This can be construed as a call to rise up against the government….yes it seems odd, but if you look at it from the idea of a cautionary tale against apathy, the it truly becomes a call to act against repression.

Even if I could believe Anet would actually subordinate the gaming community of the entire world to one kittenty government, this doesn’t explain the other two branches, which are equally bugged/inaccessible. So, nope.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Redlash.8053:

Thia.4891:

I agree Slayer. And yeah, the worst thing seems to be that they won’t even comment on it. I am furious that they would even think about messing up the story, but it saddens me to see no dev comment on the outcry from fans.

They just don’t care anymore. Plain and simple.

I rather doubt this, and doubt it is ever “plain and simple”.

I very sincerely hope you’re right. I can’t even believe this is the same Anet that has brought us LS S2 a month ago. I absolutely love Season 2 so far, story-wise.

Redlash.8053:

They just don’t care anymore. Plain and simple.

Then me, along with quite a lot of players (i. e. anyone actually caring about the story and trying to ROLEPLAY in a ROLEPLAYING GAME in some form or other) won’t care to play and feed their wallets anymore. Plain and simple.

Not that I personally have been a huge income source to them so far, but I know of people with as many as 25+ characters. I doubt that they had bought that many slots because they care only about the gameplay, which, incidentally, has also just been largely turned into crap by badly executed level gating. I know Anet are at least working on that, but some damage has already been done, and that won’t go away. A massive overhaul patch resulting in an obviously untested, chaotic bugfest is not good for any game’s reputation, even if they fix it afterwards.

You can’t go the “it’s our game, we do what we want with it” route with an mmo. At least not if you expect players to stay, which, incidentally, is supposed to be the motivation behind the massive changes.

Starting a new thread because the other one’s title is apparently not clear enough to incite a dev response, which a very large number of players clearly want to see on this topic.

Copypasting and expanding on my questions from my reply on the other thread.

What happened to the personal story and the Greatest Fear missions in particular? Is their inaccessibility and the general mess that the personal story has become around that level a bug? Are you planning to cut this content or is it just botched because of the re-grouping of missions? How do you imagine the re-ordering of missions will work out if the missions themselves have not been changed at all, in dialogue or otherwise? How do you expect the player base to accept an arbitrary jumbling up and reduction of the core storyline of the game that has been canon for two years?

The Angry Quilt.8054:

Very, very disappointed in this change, especially coming as it did without forewarning. The first season of the living story was stated clearly and often to be temporary. The removal of the Raid on the Capricorn map was announced ahead of time as well. In this case, there’s a blog post about re-ordering the personal story at high levels, but nothing about the outright removal of whole chapters.

I had a character sitting at the start of the Concordia mission before the patch, having recently finished up the Claw Island segment, with the intent of playing the “fear of letting an innocent die” storyline for the first time. I (foolishly, as it turned out) waited for the feature pack’s release, to see what the new, compelling rewards for personal story missions were like.

Now I find myself at the Battle of Fort Trinity after defeating Dzhudin Stormbreak, with its undead mesmer and water orb and no context for either of them. Had I known this was coming, I could have finished the Forging of the Pact before the patch and at least been able to play through one branch of Tonn’s story. But now I can’t, and I’m seeing no signs that I’ll ever have the opportunity to again. This situation is just frustrating and confusing.

It’s not merely frustrating and confusing, it is atrocious and unacceptable, and Anet are aggravating it by the minute with continually not responding to player inquiries about this. To be blunt, I can’t give two flying kittens about level gating when the stories of my characters, that I have already guided through the proper storyline, and grown attached to, are being kicked out the window by some kittened, obviously bugged changes in the name of “efficiency” or “flow” or whatever. If it turns out this was fully intentional, and we truly won’t be seeing those missions in the future, that will be the moment Anet loses all of my respect in one instant. I actually paid for that core storyline as well when I bought the game, and in my opinion the new dev team has simply no right to kitten on that and butcher established lore that has been part of the game since release.

BUMP.

And I am going to continue bumping until we get an answer. We already got some explanation on level gating so let’s hope we get one on this as well.

So, the question:

What happened to the personal story and the Greatest Fear missions in particular? Is their inaccessibility and the general mess that the personal story has become around that level a bug? Are you planning to cut this content or is it just botched because of the re-grouping of missions?

Alright, gating is not meant to cripple alts, only to make things less overwhelming for casual noobies, we get it. Whether that can work or not remains to be seen.

Now can we get some clarification on just what the everloving heck happened to the personal story and the Greatest Fear missions?? What is actually interesting is that one of my characters had the Battle of Fort Trinity coming up next when the update came. I completed that mission with him, and now my next one is still Liberating Apatia, so these missions are still there for those folks who had already started that arc, apparently.

Anyway, please just clarify whether the personal story also got messed up because of the grouping of missions being botched. I really do not want to believe you guys at Arenanet would take something out of the original story (which we actually payed for when we bought the game, mind you) that has been canon for two years and has been absolutely integral to the development of our characters. It’s a Role Playing Game, after all. Can you please confirm that this is a bug as well?